19/05/2013

Why Your Degree Choice No Longer Matters.

How much will I earn? What is the starting salary? What will
others think of me? How prestigious is the profession? These are just some of
the questions that many students ask as they sit down to select a course to study
and pursue later on in life. It is often an understated fact that students
rarely know what they want to study. Ask any group of teenagers and the list of
careers that they want to pursue are likely to be the same. Studying medicine,
engineering and law is seen as the apex of the intellectual and academic
journey. Of course, this trend is slowly changing, as other role models such as
musicians, radio presenters, TV and news anchors enter the picture.

When JAB meets to select students for the regular program,
it sets the cut off points for each course. The courses with the highest cut
off points are usually Law, medicine and electrical/computer engineering. Even
though the admission process is on merit alone, in some instances, at least
implicitly, some diversity and

affirmative action may be undertaken. For
instance, for a medical class to be truly representative there will have to be
sprinkles of students from some marginalized areas even if they may have scored
a point or two lower.

One aspect that has been overlooked is that courses are
rapidly merging. For instance, courses such as engineering, business and
computer Science/ Information Technology share many aspects. It is perhaps with
this realization that companies are now hiring from a variety of courses. It is
not uncommon these days to find biotechnology graduates working as bankers,
engineering graduates working as bankers, teachers working as human resources
professionals etc.For many companies,
the basic degree or diploma enables one to work in many disciplines. What the
employers are saying in effect is that the skills that they seek in potential
hires can be acquired from a variety of disciplines. Such skills as
communication skills, problem solving, hard work and creativity can be acquired
from many disciplines. What employers would consider more is how highly the
students passed. They can also unearth such skills by administering aptitude
and personality tests.

In fact, one problem that has made many students change
professions is their unsuitability to certain professions. For example, it is a
well known fact that even though you can get great grades, but you do not love
assembling and dissembling objects or being generally curious, then you might
not make a very good engineer. Similarly, if one doesn’t have the flexibility
of their fingers and have a sharp visual sense, they might not make good
surgeons. Equally, if one doesn’t have the strategic flare to make effective
judgments, then they might not make great managers even if they got great
qualifications in business management. In the same breath, if one isn’t highly
creative and artistic, then they might not make the best architects even if
they graduated at the top of their class. With this realization, many companies
and career coaches are now conducting personality tests so as to know where to
post their would be workers.

The rise in popularity of the management trainee recruits or
graduate trainees is partly born out of this fact. Many leading companies
administer graduate recruitment programs. This are in principle put in place to
hire the Fresh graduates. They are then put in training, where they are taught
several aspects of business and then posted to departments where the company
feels that their talents match. In many such companies, the programs usually
take about two years.

It is not unusual to find a biochemist being sent to the
marketing department and so on. Such companies have been visiting campuses as
they try to recruit students fresh out of university. They usually organize
with the career counseling department.

The career counseling department in universities and
colleges has often been laid back. Apart from the one or two guest speakers
that are often invited to speak to students, many of the departments do not
have much in the calendar. In the proper sense, the career counseling would
have started right from the day the student enters college up to the day they
leave, even better when they leave with a job in hand. It has been argued that
many college and university students do not have the requisite communication
skills. Drafting a CV, a key requirement for anyone applying for a job, is a
matter that is rarely emphasized by many universities. This is in spite of the
CV being such an important tool in the job application process. Equally,
carrying out of mock interviews is something that is not given much priority,
leaving many students to certainly fend for themselves. Some universities have
instituted measures to track the career path of their former students, but they
are few and far between. Such universities and colleges are at least able to
modify their programs to ensure that all their graduates are employable.

Still, one of the reasons that graduates change their career
paths is the relative pay of the professions. In this, engineering graduates
have been among the worst affected. Many have abandoned the profession and now
work in banks and other financial institutions. According to a research done by
the Pricewaterhousecoopers in 2009, the highest paying professions were in the
Finance industry. It is for this reason that this sector tends to draw in the
best and brightest graduates from all the other professions. One of the reasons
for the rapid rise of the Master in Business Administration (MBA) course is
that many students want to change to the highly lucrative but fluid financial
sector. For such graduates, the fact that they spent four or five years on
something they are not practicing does not hold water. The money rules, the
money is king. And who is to blame them, when all of us are chasing the big
money.

Even for those that feel they didn’t enroll in the courses
they deemed were suitable for them, all is not lost. The parallel degree option
as well as the opening of places in Private universities and middle level
colleges has spawned many opportunities for students who would have otherwise
had very few alternatives. For those already working, many leading companies
now do not pay a high regard to the degree or diploma, as long as an applicant possesses
the basic skills for the job.